starless
by ncfan
Summary: It's too dark in the room.


I own nothing.

* * *

It is dark all around her when she wakes, not the darkness of night, but a deep, impenetrable dark, a dark to which her eyes can never adjust, no matter how long and hard she stares into it. Not even in the gloom of the woods can Aredhel find such utter darkness; even in the gloom of the woods of Nan Elmoth, there is enough light to see. It should not be this dark, she thinks. It should not be, shouldn't it?

There should be some source of light; yes, there should. Aredhel thrashes about until she is free of the bedclothes, no small feat—she feels heavy and ungainly, as though weighted down in her hands and feet and midsection with lead. She fumbles about in the dark, feeling about blindly for the wall. Where is it, where, where?

"Aredhel? What…"

On the other side of the room, a lantern hanging against the stone wall is lit, and Aredhel remembers. She's in a room with no windows. None of the rooms or chambers in the hall of Nan Elmoth have windows. She'd forgotten that, but it's becoming increasingly easy to forget things like that.

For instance, her surroundings seem strange, and not only because her dreams take her far away to strange places with stranger people (_And who yet seem so familiar_). Her eyes dart around, and it takes a long time for Aredhel to recognize the room, still mostly drowned in darkness, as the place where she sleeps. It takes a long time for her to recognize the one who stands by the lantern and puts out the match he used to light it, framed in dull greenish light, as her husband.

"…Do… Do you ever get the feeling that you've forgotten something?" she asks, rather shakily, and for once not caring. "That the world's much wider than you think, but you've forgotten its shape?"

"No," Eöl responds. "No I do not." Entirely too calm for the situation (if a bit groggy with sleep), just as he always is when she says such things and finds herself so completely out of sorts. Aredhel wonders how he can be so calm; she doesn't think she would be, if their roles were reversed in this situation.

But then again, Aredhel doubts that Eöl has ever woken up feeling as though he's dying for lack of light and as though he's going to be eaten alive by the shadows, and not understand why he feels that way. She doubts he's woken up feeling like he's missing something, but can't even put a proper name to what he's missing. Aredhel does now, though. She casts about the room, looking for her cloak.

"Aredhel…" _Where is my cloak? Where? Where is it, where? _"Aredhel, the child…"

He does not sound calm now. Instead, Eöl sound frankly nervous, as he has sounded off and on for the past six months, ever since it could be quite positively confirmed that she was with child. It would have been amusing, seeing the look on his face when the midwife confirmed what she had suspected, if not for the expression, close to panic, in his eyes, overly bright. If not for the way his knuckles waxed white as he clenched his hands upon his knees.

What exactly he's so nervous about, Aredhel can not say for certain. When he'd turned his gaze on her that day, she had shied away, staring down at the ground, and made some comment about him looking more anxious than she felt. After a long, uncomfortable pause in which the midwife excused herself, Eöl looked away and muttered something to the effect of remembering times when pregnancy and childbirth did not end well for the mother in question. Aredhel would have very much liked to know what he meant by that, but he wouldn't elaborate, jaw clamped shut.

It is that nervous tilt to his voice, the faint tremor, utterly unlike what she's grown used to with him, that ultimately makes her stop. Aredhel feels all the panicked energy leak out of her limbs, and she remembers properly why she feels so heavy and weary, remembers swollen belly and swollen breasts and achy arms and legs. She sinks back down on the edge of the bed, bent nearly double.

This is how she's felt for what seems like eternity now, tired all the time, with intermittent bursts of wild energy. Aredhel wonders about the child, unborn, growing inside of her constantly. Is this supposed to be some sort of blessing? She's not sure if it isn't a curse, and is left unsure of why she should feel that way.

Barely making a sound against the stone floor, Eöl sits down beside her. He draws a deep, shuddering breath—it really is strange, to see him at such a loss for composure—and slides his arm about her shoulders. "…It will be several hours yet before morning—"

"How can you even tell?" It all seems the same to her, night and day and dark and light, all meshed into gloom and shadow and dull, watery green light. And that is what she's missing, Aredhel realizes, something related to that, but what, what is it?

"You have not been sleeping; you need to _rest_." Eöl, she thinks, is trying to sound calm again, trying to sound reasonable, and Aredhel is not sure to what end, to really convince her to be calm herself, or to convince himself that there is nothing wrong. Or maybe something else.

Yes, she is tired. Yes, she has not been sleeping, and she needs to rest. But Aredhel sees the shadows creeping up on her, lapping at her feet, and she can't. Not now.

It is too dark in the room, the darkness that doesn't know its own shape, but seems intent on drawing everything into itself, including her. Aredhel buries her face in her husband's chest, snaking her arms around his sides and digging her fingernails into his back. She feels as though she will be pulled down into the dark, consumed and forgotten, if she lets go.


End file.
